Long before she became a redhead and a TV superstar on “I Love Lucy,” a young Lucille Ball dutifully posed for a studio portrait in an Irish maid’s outfit complete with leprechaun to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
And Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, who made nine movies together in the 1940s, including John Huston’s 1941 masterpiece, “The Maltese Falcon,” posed for perhaps one of the strangest studio Christmas photos ever, with Lorre holding up a baseball bat ready to swing at an unsuspecting Greenstreet dressed as Santa Claus.
Those photographs are featured in a lively new book, “Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays: 1920-1970” by film historian and author Karie Bible — the official tour guide of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery — and film historian and author Mary Mallory.
The book is divided into all the major holidays as well as miscellaneous holidays, Hollywood during the war years and television stars posing for holidays, including one with Dinah Shore celebrating Easter with a creepy Plasticine white rabbit.
Posing for these photographs, said Mallory, “was all part of the publicity machine — anything they could do to get people’s names and faces in front of the public. They did all kinds of photos — swimsuit, people playing sports, cooking — that could be used in different sections of the newspaper and magazines.”
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1944: Canadian actress Deanna Durbin eating an early breakfast while sitting under a hairdryer on location for the filming of Universal’s musical “Can’t Help Singing.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1955: Director George Sidney, left, wears a diving mask while directing American swimmer and actress Esther Williams on the set of his film “Jupiter’s Darling.” The cameraman is wearing scuba gear. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1948: Actress Ingrid Bergman sits next to the camera during a break in filming on the set of director Victor Fleming’s film “Joan of Arc.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1932: Stan Laurel, with a blackened eye, and Oliver Hardy during a break in the filming of “Towed in a Hole,” directed by George Marshall. [For the record: This caption previously stated that the film was 1928’s “The Finishing Touch.”] (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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February 1958: Montgomery Clift on location in Indiana with Elizabeth Taylor for the filming of “Raintree County.” (BIPS/Getty Images)
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Circa 1935: Mary Boland and Charles Ruggles with writer Herbert Fields, film editor Richard Currier, script girl Evelyn Earl, director Alfred Santell, cameraman Alfred Gilks, head electrician “Sailor” Holton, Dean Jagger and Leila Hyams on the set of Paramount’s “People Will Talk.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1967: John Wayne, with his son, on location in Mexico for the filming of “The War Wagon.” (Keystone/Getty Images)
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Circa 1938: John Payne, who was once a wrestler, became a general all-purpose leading man mainly in westerns and musicals. He is keeping fit on location in Pensacola, Fla., during filming of “Wings of the Navy.” (Homer Van Pelt/Getty Images)
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1951: Clark Gable having a shave during filming of the MGM production “Across the Wide Missouri.” (MGM Studios/Getty Images)
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Circa 1923: Mildred Harris, a leading lady and first wife of Charlie Chaplin, is applying make-up on the beach between production shoots. (Edward Gooch/Getty Images)
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Circa 1937: Dorothy Lamour, playing with “Jiggs” the chimpanzee, while on location in Palm Springs for “Her Jungle Love.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Comedy team Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin performing on the set of the television show “Hollywood vs TV.” (Gene Lester/Getty Images)
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Circa 1915: Filming a Broncho Billy movie at Essanay Studios in Chicago. Broncho Billy, America’s first cowboy hero of the silver screen, is the second figure from the left, wearing chaps and a white hat. (Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)
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1955: Charlton Heston, left, rides on horseback while shaking hands with Yul Brynner, who stands in a chariot before filming the chase sequence on the set of director Cecil B. DeMille’s film, “The Ten Commandments.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Barbra Streisand offers a cup of coffee to Prince Charles as they chat on a set at Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles on March 19, 1974. The Prince is visiting Southern California while his ship is docked in San Diego. (DFS/Associated Press)
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Al Pacino, center, is on the set of “Author! Author!” in New York City’s Washington Square on Oct. 20, 1981. (David Handschuh/Associated Press)
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In this Aug. 17, 1984, photo, actor Roger Moore, as British secret agent James Bond, is seen with his costars Tanya Roberts, left, and Grace Jones on the set of “A View to a Kill,” near Paris, France. (Alexis Duclos/Associated Press)
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Actor Larry Hagman on the set of his TV series “Dallas” on Feb. 2, 1979. (George Brich/Associated Press)
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Phoebe, a mynah bird and one of the stars of the TV series “Petticoat Junction,” perches on the back of a chair during a break in filming in Hollywood on Aug. 9, 1963. (David F. Smith/Associated Press)
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Elizabeth Taylor leaves the set of “The VIPs” at London Airport on March 20, 1963. Taylor was following in the wake of her costar, Richard Burton, who had stormed off the set complaining about the crowd of onlookers milling about. (Victor Boynton/Associated Press)
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Buster Keaton, comic film actor from the silent era, dressed as Santa Claus, and Bobbi Shaw as Santa’s helper are on the set of “Beach Blanket Bingo” in Los Angeles on Dec. 17, 1964. (DAD/Associated Press)
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James Whitmore points out buildings of the Manhattan skyline to British actress Deborah Kerr on a Hollywood sound stage, Sept. 18, 1949. The backdrop was prepared for a scene in “Please Believe Me.” (Frank Filan/Associated Press)
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Technicians rig wires and charges in preparation for blasts and fires to be set off in buidings along a recreated Los Angeles street for the film “The War of the Worlds” on June 6, 1952. The houses are painted to match existing buildings in Los Angeles. (Ellis R. Bosworth/Associated Press)
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General view of the set built at Chatsworth, Calif., for “The Big Fisherman” on Oct. 24, 1958. The buildings depict the city of Tiberias built on a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee. In the foreground are extras dressed as Roman soldiers awaiting their cue to ride. (David F. Smith/Associated Press)
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Director Jerry Lewis, right, checks camera angle on the set of “The Nutty Professor” on Dec. 3, 1962, in Los Angeles. (David F. Smith/ Associated Press)
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Tuesday Weld and Steve McQueen on the set of “The Cincinnati Kid” in 1965. Cameraman Phil Lathrop is taking a light meter reading before filming the scene. (MGM/Associated Press)
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Scores of teen-agers film a musical number for “Bye, Bye, Birdie” on Jan. 10, 1963. Director George Sidney is on the camera crane. (Don Brinn/ Associated Press)
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Director Michael Cimino, left, talks with actor Robert De Niro, wearing beret, during a break in filming of “The Deer Hunter” on location in Bangkok, Thailand, on Sept. 11, 1977. (Neal Ulevich/Associated Press)
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A model of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is blown up in “41 Days of Terror” on Oct. 25, 1960. (Nobuyuki Masaki/ Associated Press)
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A scale model of a Los Angeles street goes up in flames on a Hollywood sound stage during filming of the scene from “War of the Worlds” on June 6, 1952. (Ellis R. Bosworth/ Associated Press)
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George Hamilton walks on the roof of the Hotel Louvre during filming of “Jack of Diamonds” on Oct. 17, 1966, in Paris. (Jean Jacques Levy/Associated Press)
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Stars Omar Sharif and Geraldine Chaplin wait while a photography crew checks a camera during filming of “Doctor Zhivago” in Spain. (MGM/Associated Press)
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Actor Charles Bronson, at Sing Sing in Ossining, N.Y., on March 30, 1972, while cameras roll for “The Valachi Papers.” (Ron Freh/ Associated Press)
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In this July 26, 1971, photo, Alfred Hitchcock, right, discusses filming with actress Anna Massey, one of the stars of “Frenzy”, in Covent Garden Market in London. (Leonard Brown/ Associated Press)
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Director Ron Howard takes a seat behind the camera during the production of his comedy “Gung Ho” while on location at the Allegheny County Airport near Duquesne, Pa., in August 1985. At right is his father, actor Rance Howard, who has a cameo.
(Keith B. Srakocic/Associated Press)
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Director Woody Allen chats with Oscar-winning actor Jose Ferrer, right, during the production of his comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” in New York’s Upper West Side on Aug. 18, 1981. (Loren Portnow/ Associated Press)
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The legendary movie monster Godzilla creates a dust storm during the production of the Toho production company’s 24th Godzilla movie at its studio in Tokyo on Aug. 3, 2000. During the production of “Godzilla vs. Megaguirus,” 1,500 of the monster’s fans applied to a week-long “see Godzilla filming” tour organized by Toho and a travel agency. (Tsugufumi Matsumoto/Associated Press)
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A real chimp, Kelly, is getting a human-style plastic nose for his role in “Escape from the Planet of the Apes” because his nose is flatter than the actors in ape makeup. A film technician, left, applies the nose while actors Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowell look on in Hollywood on Jan. 20, 1971. (David F. Smith/Associated Press)
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Director Francis Ford Coppola instructs his crew as they set up to shoot a scene in New York’s Little Italy for “The Godfather III” on May 19, 1990. (Gene Page/Associated Press)
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Special effects artists shoot the model of the dirigible the Hindenberg during the filming of Robert Wise’s “The Hindenberg” on Aug. 18, 1974, at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. (David F. Smith/ Associated Press)
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Two-time Oscar-winning film director Oliver Stone (“Platoon,” “Born on the Fourth of July”) gets a look at a camera angle for a motorcade scene in his film “JFK” in Dallas, Texas, on April 17, 1991. (Pat Sullivan/Associated Press)
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Among the earliest photos in the book is a Yuletide snapshot in the 1920s of vamp Mae Busch (“Foolish Wives”) telling fans to “Avoid the Hurly Burly and Do Your Shopping Early.”
The Hollywood studios established their stills departments in the 1920s when “they realized there were so many fan magazines and so many newspapers,” said Mallory. “They wanted to control the image [of the actors] and how things were used. The best way to do that was to do it yourself. They did candids, portraits and production stills.”
Holidays photos were also great way to publicize starlets such as Leslie Brooks, who played leads in B-movies in the 1940s, showing a bit of leg as she poses by a rather anemic Christmas tree decorated in World War II bonds and stamps, and MGM bit player Mary Doran wearing a tight-fitting one-piece outfit riding a gigantic turkey for a 1930 Thanksgiving-theme picture.
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Child stars Shirley Temple and the “Our Gang” kids were used in the holiday stills, as were ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his wooden companion Charlie McCarthy. A Valentine’s Day portrait of McCarthy, imposed on a toddler’s body wearing angel wings and diapers, as Cupid “was so strange we had to include it,” Bible said.
A lot of the photos were geared toward men, Mallory said, with women “in bathing suits, lingerie and short skirts showing their legs and ample figures.”
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In Barcelona, Spain, Blake Lively, center, films a scene from “All I See Is You” on July 27, 2015.
(Europa Press / Getty Images)
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Johnny Depp, as Capt. Jack Sparrow, returns from a day on the film set in Redland Bay, near Brisbane in Australia. Depp has been there to film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” the fifth installment in the “Pirates” franchise.
(Tertius Pickard / AFP/Getty Images)
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On the set in New York City, Jim Gaffigan saves Steve Buscemi from a bike accident as he picks up a coin in the middle of the street.
(Josiah Kamau / Getty Images)
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Ben Stiller, center, on the set in Rome. (FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP/Getty Images)
Bible and Mallory had to dig and dig to find holiday pictures featuring actors. “I had a feeling not a lot of guys liked to pose for these pictures,” said Mallory.
Jack Haley, the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” is featured as Santa in a portrait to publicize a Christmas episode of his radio show, “Log Cabin Jamboree.”
Oscar-winning tough guy Wallace Beery (“The Champ”) and his daughter were photographed celebrating the Fourth of July setting off fireworks, and Clifton Webb looks miffed carving a turkey on the set of his 1950 film “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
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Joan Crawford is featured in three photographs in the book, including one of her as Santa Claus sitting on the chimney with a doll in one hand and a rifle in the other.
“If Joan was not making movies and she was awake, she was pretty much posing for publicity photos,” said Bible. “I think more than any other star, she understood the power of publicity and how important it was in her career.”
Susan King is a former entertainment writer at the Los Angeles Times who specialized in Classic Hollywood stories. She also wrote about independent, foreign and studio movies and occasionally TV and theater stories. Born in East Orange, N.J., she received her master’s degree in film history and criticism at USC. She worked for 10 years at the L.A. Herald Examiner and came to work at The Times in January 1990. She left in 2016.
